Cashew Mayonnaise

Nothing like a cheeky bit of creamy dressing to transform a salad! All you need to start you off is 1 cup of cashews (100g) which have been soaked for a few hours, or better still, overnight for even easier blending.

(You can also use blanched almonds. Or non-blanched almonds; you just won’t have such a white dressing. In both cases though, soak overnight and discard the soak water)

In a blender, as in, a liquidiser/smoothie-making-type-blender, combine the following:

1 cup (100g) of cashews, soaked till soft (discard the soak water)

3/4 cup water

2 teaspoons lemon juice (or more, to taste)

1/4 t sea salt (or, to taste)

1 1/4 teaspoons onion powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Blend until creamy and smooth. You may need to stop blending periodically to scrape down the mixture in your blender.

Of course, the cashew mixture just provide a creamy base, and this is just an idea. You can different seasonings, according to taste. You can substitute the lemon juice with a white vinegar, add fresh/dried herbs like basil or dill , or some softened sundried tomatoes to give it a different twist; you can sweeten it with a soft date or some honey, or add something punchier like mustard. You can put in fresh onion or fresh garlic instead of dried granules, and so on, and so on.

Pour over your favourite salad, and depending on the size of the salad, you may only need half of this, and you can refridgerate the rest, covered.

It would be nice on coleslaw, and I use a variation of this dressing on a raw broccoli salad which is sooo delicious. The recipe is here.

PS It’s not that I have an issue over eggs from genuinely happy hens that we can see with our own eyes are happy (we know some of those hens, and that’s where we buy our eggs)

If you don’t mind having raw egg, a home-made mayo with an egg yolk and some quality oil is obviously far preferable to a commercial version. But since this website is a celebration of plant-eating, everything is plantified, and therefore, this is my “mayo” of choice 🙂

And it is, of course, suitable for people with egg allergies and if you prefer to avoid foods high in harmful cholesterols. Not suitable for people who don’t get on with cashews, but you knew that 🙂 and you can always use almonds.